AMR powered news still to be had over this Roar before the 24 test weekend
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
At the top of the pile, the Weathertech Sportscar Challenge has already confirmed the driver listings with all of the Heart of Racing, Magnus Racing and Van Der Steur Racing Vantage GTD entries although we have yet to see any of the cars in the flesh.
The #19 Van Der Steur is the newest entry of the three with Rory Van Der Steur joining Valentin Hasse-Clot, Maxime Robin and Anthony McIntosh aboard the former Flying Lizard car. Whilst we have seen snippets of the car in its full livery – the total image has yet to be seen.
The #007 Heart of Racing GTD Pro entry (which is in lieu of the delayed Valkyrie GTP effort due to go on-line at the next round of the season at Sebring) did have a four-driver line up, but we see that Marco Sorensen has since been removed from the Ross Gunn, Alex Riberas and Roman De Angelis effort. Not sure what is happening there?
The #007 Heart of Racing GTD Pro entry (which is in lieu of the delayed Valkyrie GTP effort due to go on-line at the next round of the season at Sebring) did have a four-driver line up, but we see that Marco Sorensen has since been removed from the Ross Gunn, Alex Riberas and Roman De Angelis effort. Not sure what is happening there?
They will be joined by their sister #27 GTD entry of Tom Gamble, Casper Stevenson, Zacharie Robichon and Mattea Drudi. With both cars, we are assuming that their race livery will be somewhat similar to previous years but again, we cannot say so for sure.
Likewise with the #44 Magnus Racing AMR GTD effort of John Potter, Andy Lally, Spencer Pumpelly and Nicki Thiim who join forces again at this event for what is their swansong adventure in the series for the determinable future.
Whilst the Weathertech Sportscar Championship grid is at Daytona for both testing and qualifying ahead of next weekend’s Rolex 24, the Michelin Pilot Challenge Series are there purely for elective testing.
Four of the five AMR Vantage GT4 runners will however be at the Roar test with the Van Der Steur team this fielding a completely new bronze cup rated driver line up in Christine and Ben Sloss in the #15 GT4 Evo alongside both the #46 and #64 Team TGM entries of Matt Plumb/Paul Holton and Hugh Plumb/Ted Giovanis/Kris Wilson respectively – also aboard their two new GT4 Evo’s.
Robin Liddell, Andrew Davis plus one TBC join forces aboard the returning #71 Rebel Rock Racing GT4 Evo whilst Brady Behrman’s #82 Van Der Steur Vantage GT4 will not be at the Roar test but will be at the opening four-hour round to the series alongside GT racing newbie (but competent NASCAR tin top racer) Sammy Smith.
Again, the #15, #46, and #64 entries will be brand new Vantage GT4 Evo’s, and all might be sporting different liveries that we may have been used to seeing them in?
The biggest amount of information flow is however required with the AMR Vantage GT4 entries within the VP Racing Sportscar Challenge Series as presently, none of the four cars entered have a drivers name listed.
Familiar names from the Automatic Racing and Rebel Rock Racing teams return to the series for 2025 but we also have new names and entries from the FastMD Racing with Remstar and 89X Motorsport for their respective #3 AND #89 entries. All bar the #09 Automatic Racing entry are listed as running the new Evo version, but we suspect the #89 car will also be the older 17A version since they purchased last year’s #19 Van Der Steur chassis from that team at the end of last season.
This series will also be racing their first two races of the season during the Roar weekend with a fifty-minute race over both Saturday and Sunday.
There will of course be plenty of information to be had over the weekend as that testing and preparation swiftly turns into race preparation in its earnest as both the Weathertech Sportscar Championship and Michelin Pilot Challenge start their 2025 campaigns at the Daytona International Speedway next weekend.
Photo credits – Teams / Series / social media